The Jill Poole Memorial Lecture by the Lord Chief Justice: Keeping commercial law up to date

It is both a pleasure and an honour to give the first in a series of lectures in memory of Jill Poole. I knew her, what seems now a very long time ago, as a young law lecturer at Cardiff University when I went back to Wales to be a Presiding Judge in 1998. I followed her career through UWE, and then finally here, with great interest. She was very dynamic. She did a great deal for Cardiff and a huge amount for UWE; it has been a pleasure to know what she has done here. So it is, I think, fitting, that I should have this opportunity and privilege of saying something about a subject in which she was so interested, which was contract law, but seen through a commercial lens. I thought I would take as a topic not some interesting aspect of commercial law (such as bills of lading as I might lose you very, very quickly), but look at a much broader canvas – keeping commercial law up to date.

Although I am always reluctant about speaking of too many duties that judges carry, particularly when there are so many judges here this evening, one of the duties judges have, which is central to their role, is keeping the law up to date.